Environment & Energy

unhappycamper

(60,364 posts) Thu Oct 3, 2013, 07:51 AM Oct 2013

Human Assault Pushes Ocean to Limit Unseen in 300 Million Years

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/03

'We are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change,' warns report. 'The next mass extinction may have already begun.'

Human Assault Pushes Ocean to Limit Unseen in 300 Million Years
- Jon Queally, staff writer
Published on Thursday, October 3, 2013 by Common Dreams

The news, the evidence that supports it, and the warning that accompanies it could hardly be more dire.

The latest audit by an international team of marine scientists at the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) found that the world's oceans and marine life are facing an unprecedented threat by combination of industrial pollution, human-driven global warming and climate change, and continued and rampant overfishing.

According to the report, The State of the Ocean 2013: Perils, Prognoses and Proposals, the degradation of the ocean ecosystem means that its role as Earth’s ‘buffer’ is being seriously compromised. As a result, the authors of the report call for "urgent remedies" because the "rate, speed, and impacts of change in the global ocean are greater, faster, and more imminent than previously thought."

Driven by accumulations of carbon, the scientists found, the rate of acidification in the oceans is the highest its been in over 300 million years. Additionally, de-oxygenation--caused by both warming and industrial runoff--is stripping the ocean of its ability to support the plants and animals that live in it.